Apheresis is a procedure in which individual blood components (e.g., platelets) can be separated and collected from whole blood temporarily withdrawn from a subject. Additionally, blood components such as platelets may be collected using a variety of other process. Once collected, these components may be stored and later transfused into patients. However, in some instances, the receiving patient may have adverse reactions (sometime severe) to the transfusion. For example, the occurrence of adverse reactions such as allergic reactions, anaphylactic reactions, and/or febrile nonhemolytic transfusion reactions (FNHTRs) to platelet concentrates (PCs) and/or platelet rich plasma (PRP) is well-documented. A large number of these adverse reactions are caused by the patients' sensitivity to the proteins contained within the plasma (e.g., the supernatant in which the platelets are suspended). Additionally, the plasma/supernatant may also contain a number of contaminates that are in solution with and/or suspended within the supernatant. These contaminates may increase the severity of the reactions and/or may cause additional reactions.
In order to reduce the occurrence of these reactions, various prior art systems “wash” the platelets to remove the plasma supernatant from the platelet concentrate and/or PRP prior to transfusion. For example, prior art systems may dilute the platelet product with saline solution within the platelet collection bag. Once diluted, prior art systems and methods then centrifuge the diluted platelet product in order to form a “platelet pellet” at the bottom of the bag. The pellet supernatant (e.g., the plasma) may then be removed, for example, using a whole blood separation press, and the platelets resuspended in a different solution. The dilution procedure must then be repeated multiple times (e.g., at least three times) in order to sufficiently remove the supernatant (e.g., the plasma) and proteins/contaminates. Once the supernatant and proteins have been sufficiently removed, the platelets may then be resuspended within a platelet additive solution. By essentially replacing the plasma supernatant with platelet additive solution, prior art methods are able to reduce the risk of adverse reaction.
However, prior art systems and methods like those described above are problematic for a variety of reasons. First, because prior art systems require multiple sterile docking steps (e.g., in order to repeat the washing procedure and to add the platelet additive solution), the product is not processed in a functionally closed manner which, in turn, increases the risk of contamination and reduces the length of time that the platelets can be stored. Additionally, manual processes inherently have a high risk of human error and the results may vary depending on the operator (e.g., they are not reproducible). Furthermore, the manual prior art procedures are labor intensive.